Madam Chair, the member opposite made a comment about me disappearing during the election, but I remember being part of a debate. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture put on a tremendous debate every election. We had that down the street at the Chateau. I was on the panel for some two, two and a half, hours, but I do not remember the Bloc having a representative there at all. The member should be careful to whom he points his finger.
Talking about the future of agriculture, as the member opposite did, there are two different ways to approach it. The one way is to keep farmers reliant on the mailbox. That is not what they want. What they want is a full blown, market access type of situation. They want to access that and they want to do it in a proactive way, with the new innovative ways with which farmers come up.
Farmers are nothing, if not good stewards of the land. They produce the safest, most secure food supply in the world, bar none. We will all agree on that. I think all of us support agriculture in our own way.
That is the great thing about democracy. There is always divergence of opinions, but there is a convergence of what needs to be done.
I take what the member opposite said, but I know when he talks directly to farmers in Quebec, as do many of my colleagues who represent farmers in Quebec, he will also hear the other side of the coin. They are happy to see a government get past the old ideas of sending them a cheque to keep them in mediocrity, allowing them, in our programming, to break the mould and get out in the world with some new innovative ideas. We are constantly doing that. We are helping farmers get their feet under themselves, not forcing them to take that cheque from the mailbox and holding them back.